Why Running an ONLINE Business is so Utterly Different Than Running an OFFLINE One

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Shush! This is the kind of knowledge many marketers and online gurus donâ€™t want you to know. Or maybe they do, but they donâ€™t know how to say it out loudâ€¦ Anyways.

Let me tell you what the main problem is. It happens when someone wants to start an online business having only the experience from running an offline one, and trusting this experience too much.

If youâ€™ve been running an offline business you find opening an online one almost too easy. Hereâ€™s what you might think: â€œI donâ€™t have to hire people, I donâ€™t need to pay rent, I donâ€™t need a nice mall placement, I donâ€™t need to clean the place up, I can be doing this out of my bedroom in my underwear, and at the same time I can sell to millions of people around the world? Sounds easy, like finding a hooker in a red light district!â€ So you hire a design company, get a website built, launch the business and wait. But. Nothing happens.

Hereâ€™s the problem and one of the top internet marketing tips. The if-you-build-it-they-will-come approach works great in big malls, works sometimes if you have a good city center location, but doesnâ€™t work at all on the internet. Thereâ€™s no such thing as â€œgood locationâ€ on the internet. Everyone has a location equally good.

The first rule of online business: If you build it they wonâ€™t come

Wasnâ€™t the internet supposed to be the land of opportunity with millions of people waiting to be sold to? Well the people are there, they just donâ€™t know you exist.

For some business environments this comes natural and the constant stream of prospects is just something that â€œhappens by itself.â€ I.e. a situation when you donâ€™t have to worry about attracting customers because you just happen to be standing in a place where they canâ€™t possibly miss you.

Imagine you own a store in a big mall. In this case people (customers) are already there. You donâ€™t have to do anything to get them to the mall. You can leave that to the bigger players who are there with you. No one forces you to do any advertising.

This is one of the biggest advantages of some offline businesses over their online sisters â€“ the magic stream of ever-hungry customers. Of course, itâ€™s not always like this. If you build your store in the middle of nowhere then donâ€™t expect myriads off people to appear all of a sudden.

Running an offline business has its disadvantages as well, obviously, and many additional costs that need to be taken care of. The biggest of which â€“ rent. If you want a good placement in a big mall itâ€™s going to cost you a lot. But wait, thereâ€™s more! You have to take care of your storefront, make it look interesting and inviting. Not only this, but the inside of the store has to be nice as well. You have to hire the right people. People who can provide exceptional service making the whole sale process pleasant to the customer. You have to keep an eye on what everybody else around you is doing (other store owners), and so on, and so onâ€¦ In the end thereâ€™s a lot of hustle involved if you want to make it.

Why online business is totally different

You see, online people are not walking around visiting different places like they would in a real mall. On the internet what they are really doing is teleporting themselves from one place to the other having no idea what else is out there.

Thatâ€™s why the number one thing you have to be doing is working on your marketing (try being drunk while doing your marketing… just a thought), i.e. getting people through your online door. Whatâ€™s the point of having a cure for cancer if youâ€™re sitting in a locked basement buried in the middle of a desert? (And thatâ€™s a good definition of any website, I think.)

If, for some reason, you can focus on just one thing when it comes to running your online business focus on traffic generation. Focus on grabbing people and dragging them to your site. This one activity alone should prevent you from starvation.

Letâ€™s take a look at the comparison: â€œOnline vs offline â€“ the fight of businessesâ€.

Is running offline business easier?

Not at all. Business is business. You still need a USP. You still need a plan. You still need an elevator pitch. Both on- and offline are equally challenging. The challenges are just slightly different.